In a new study from the University of Pennsylvania, a team of social psychologists revealed a new theory on how people react to threats. In an article for The Atlantic, Nicola Y. Davis explains the study and its implications on empathy in humans. “What we found was that when people think someone else might be going through some pain or fear, they feel more compassionate toward them than if they think someone else is simply uncomfortable,” said Joshua Correll, one of the study's co-authors and associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder. In the study, researchers looked at participants’ reactions when they thought someone might be both afraid and in pain. Participants were given a set of pictures of people expressing either fear or pain, and then asked to choose the emotion they thought a target was experiencing. In each scenario, participants “overwhelmingly” chose fear over pain as the emotion the target was experiencing. On average, participants were 87% correct in choosing fear over pain. In another experiment, participants were shown pictures that connotes fear or discomfort from a person's face to their body language. In this scenario, participants chose fear as the dominant emotion 62% of the time, which is still far ahead of pain at 38%. The researchers also created a variety of scenarios, which they called “social dilemmas,” that tested how participants reacted to different situations. In one scenario, participants were shown pictures of individuals drawing lots to see who would be the victim of two murderers. When asked if they would help facilitate the murder or not, 73% chose to do nothing. When Correll and colleagues analyzed the data from multiple experiments from around the world, they found that when people thought someone was in pain or afraid, they were six times more likely to help out in a social dilemma. However, when people thought someone was just uncomfortable or hot in a room with no witnesses around, their likelihood of helping out dropped significantly. While the study shows that people are likely to help out a stranger if they think the stranger is afraid, the researchers believe fear is a strong enough emotion to override fear of retaliation. “In many cases, people were asked to make these decisions anonymously, without any chance of being identified later or meaningfully punished by anyone else,” said Correll. “So it suggests that this pro-social motivation overrides concerns about personal safety.” Although this will not change what security measures are taken in the near future, it does raise questions about how we react when we see someone having a panic attack or crying from fear from something outside their control. "We're interested in how people respond to other people's distress, not just how they respond to our own distress. If someone is distressed, we empathize with that person—we say, “oh that's terrible, that's awful”—but this is not useful for understanding the stranger effect... What we found is that when people think someone else might be going through some pain or fear, they feel more compassionate toward them than if they think someone else is simply uncomfortable. Here’s an interesting finding: Prosocial behavior emerges when people think you might be experiencing something important." It looks like if you are experiencing something important (and it could be anything), then there is a huge psychological benefit of helping out. 8eeb4e9f32 28
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